Comments by "Bob" (@bobs_toys) on "David Pakman Show"
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Technically yes there is.
Someone who wants a state to become socialist is left wing.
Someone who's in a socialist state that wants it to remain socialist is right wing.
Someone who wants something new is left wing
Someone who likes the status quo is right wing (conservative)
Someone who wants to return to a previous status quo is right wing (reactionary)
This is the basic definition of that, dating back to 1789. We apply the label to Socialists, because in countries that aren't socialist, they are definitely left wing.
It's not being left wing or right wing that's the problem, it's supporting retarded ideas that don't work.
For Fascism, I'll use Hitler as an example:
Hitler was left when his power was increasing. He really wanted a lot of change, and as he didn't turn Germany over to the Kaiser, we can see he wasn't a reactionary.
When his power was at its height, the war was going well, etc, he was right. He didn't want things to change.
And after that, when things fell apart, he was still reactionary. At least, I assume he wanted to go back to when he was still succeeding.
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>>Robert Bray right wing isn't keeping things where it's at. <<
Oh, it is by definition.
"disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change."
Or moving back to a previous status quo. The stuff you're talking about is libertarianism. If you're in a libertarian society and you want to keep things as they are, then you're right wing. If you're in a society that focuses on the group and want to become libertarian, you're left wing.
None of these terms are applied to any specific issue. That's why, as you say, conservatism is different between different countries. A right-winger in the USSR is a very different beast to a right-winger in the USA. Views that were extremely left in the 1800's are very right during the 2000's.
I'm going to apologise for skipping over a lot of what you've said, but that's largely because it's embodied in what I'd just said.
Bismarck wasn't conservative. He was a Monarchist, sure, but as I'd just said, left and right aren't confined to specific issues. They only apply to someone's attitude to change.
He wanted a united German Empire. He sure as hell wasn't Liberal, but he wasn't conservative. (Although if you count the Holy Roman Empire, he might have been reactionary)
>>The political spectrum isn't just right and left it's big government which mainly tends to the left with some going for smaller government<<
Going to use this as another example:
If you're in a country with a big government, and you want to reduce it, you're left. Vice versa is also true.
If you think the govt size is just fine how it is, or you want to put it to what it was before, you're right.
>>Constitutional conservatives want to stick to the constitution where there are limits on how much the government is allowed to control<<
Exactly. Constitutional conservatives don't want to change the constitution. They also want it to keep its current prominence.
Anyway, I could go on a lot longer, but...
If your society is X and you want Y, you are left wing.
If your society becomes Y and you still want Y, you are right wing. (Conservative)
If your society becomes Z and you want to go back to Y, you are right wing (reactionary)
That's true for any position. If you've never had it but want it, on that topic, you're left. If you either have it, or had it and want it back, you're right.
Left/Right apply to how much you want change
Libertarian/Authoritarian apply to how much you value individual rights.
And how Liberal you are (I can't think of the Antonym) is basically summed up by one sentence: "I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it" - It relates to how accepting you are of people who disagree with you. Antifa aren't liberal. Socialists are not liberal. Anyone who will use force to silence someone they disagree with is not liberal.
On the other hand, if you accept that people will disagree with you, and that's their right, then you are liberal. By definition.
I make a big point of highlighting these definitions because, well...
Their colloquial definitions have been so warped by both sides, it's impossible to have a conversation about them.
I'm a Liberal. I'm sure as fuck not a Socialist.
I'm actually pretty left wing. I'm a geek, part of the job requirement is a belief that change is awesome. But the change needs to be a good idea. Socialism is a bad idea.
So I'm a left wing atheist capitalist who strongly supports skilled migration from any source and thinks that even Nazis have a right to voice their thoughts and contribute to the debate. With the sole (as far as I can tell) exception being if there's an immediate incitement to violence. "I think the Jews should be wiped out" = Fair enough. That's just an opinion. "Lets go and kill a Jew" = No. That's an immediate incitement to violence. Assuming there are Jews in the area.
In Australia I'm a Liberal (Conservative party) supporter... In the US, I really don't know.... I guess I'd be a democrat, but... Really don't know.
A large part of this indecision is because there's a huge religious aspect to politics in the US that's absent here. Minus religion, I'd probably be a Republican. Another large part is because our Labor party is union-controlled, plus a decent amount of influence from the socialists. I think both are cancer.
Oh, I'm also a fairly weak Republican who stopped being a Monarchist purely because I want a directly elected head of state, not because I've got any problem with the Monarchy. I think they do a good job.
So... Pigeonhole me :P If you manage to do it convincingly without breaking down my views and assessing each individually, I'll be impressed. If you break down my views and assess each individually, you'll have seen my point :)
>>Robert Bray thanks for the polite response. People get to emotional nowadays the farther they get to both sides.<<
Amen to that, buddy.
Another reason I'm very keen on correct definitions. Words mean things. If words become meaningless, debate becomes impossible. If debate becomes impossible, things get very bad, very quickly. Which was one of the key takeaways from 1984.
You see similar on Atheist/Agnostic/Religious. That's a false trichotomy.
Either you're a Theist or an Atheist. (Someone who believes in a deity, or someone who doesn't)
Either you're a gnostic (someone who knows or thinks he knows) or you're an agnostic (someone who doesn't think there's enough information to say either way)
But you're going to be two of these. I'm an agnostic Atheist. It's impossible to know (logically, it is impossible to know. How do you disprove a negative?) but I have no religious belief.
People focus on atheist/agnostic/religious as a way of creating a straw man when discussing atheism, to try to turn a lack of belief into a positive claim that there is no god.
Edit: Apologies for any rambling or wall of text. My wife has the same problem with me... It's just that as simple as these sound, and in many ways, as simple as they are, they've got a tendency to need a lot of explaining. It's not because of anything you've said, it's because I've been down this path many times)
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@DemonofElru666 >>The deaths are caused by imperialistic wars over the control of natural resources or by the direct use of force by the imperialist nation. The imperialistic wars happen usually because of the imperialist nation's direct use of force, or by more subtle means like the corruption/dictatorships fueled by business interests. Often, this starts by capitalists wanting to exploit the natural resources and cheap labor of another nation, with the state helping the capitalists so that it can help fuel the engine of the home nation's economy... these are the main incentives inherent to capitalism that drives imperialism and so the deaths can be attributed to it.<<
Is it your belief that Socialist states didn't exhibit the same behaviour? If you're going to say yes, keep in mind the obvious rejoinders. If you're going to say no, well...
If you're going to try to pin something in Capitalism, it needs to be something that's unique to Capitalism.
Otherwise it looks more like people wanting stuff. Which isn't a problem with any particular system, just us being jerks.
>>There's nothing that would make capitalism worthwhile if something inherent to it can cause so much death and can never be done away with. I would say the same of socialism if there was something inherent to it that has similar or worse results. As a society we should be trying to fix serious problems like that by trying things that are new, especially different economic systems, but we don't really do that because so many people, especially right wingers, don't seem to care that much if at all about such problems and actively go against any sort of change that could make the world a better place.
<<
Long story short: You need to choose something. If you've got anything better than Capitalism, feel free to give it with the reasons. Keep in mind that failed economic experiments have killed far more than Hitler has. How many people are you OK with killing to replace the system that caused this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty#/media/File:World-population-in-extreme-poverty-absolute.svg
That's some pretty epic success right there.
>>Socialism has had the most success in anarchic societies... genuinely socialist societies most likely wouldn't have states and a "state socialist" society always had some kind of fake socialism that was far from ideal historically. There have been socialist societies formed by libertarian socialist philosophy (and all were anarchistic) that have made me think it could work if we do it right though.
<<
Yeah. Not many Anarchist societies today. Particularly not that are economically competitive with an organised Capitalist state... Pretty sure that number is 0.
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@DemonofElru666 >>No, and the reason for why they behaved the same way was because those states had to do exactly as private capitalist institutions do, which is exchanging products and services for profit. So those that controlled the state responded to the same incentives that capitalists would. <<
Profit is the positive difference between what you put in and what you get out. I don't care what system you're running, if there's no profit, you're operating break even, or more likely, at a loss. That's not sustainable.
>>Imperialism may not be unique to capitalism, but it still drives it by mechanisms that are inherent to it just like previous systems and that result in the incentives I mentioned previously. The main ones being the constant need of market expansion to survive, and the immense concentration of wealth to a small unaccountable elite that controls society with their wealth, which makes the government appeal only to the morality of them (which tend to be extremely greedy and immoral since capitalism rewards greed and certain kinds of immorality the most) instead of that of the whole society.<<
Yeah. Again, people in general need resources.
And you're concerned about businesses being in control of the economic world. Yet apparently see no issue with governments being in control of the political AND the economic world. All you're doing is changing the masteres.
>>Getting rid of imperialism can be done with a socialism that establishes a political system that is truly accountable to the masses.<<
Good luck with that. Maybe the next hundred million deaths will get it for you.
You can choose accountability or you can choose socialism. Socialism fails the first time someone says he'd rather keep what he produces for himself. At that point, you can either crack down, and set the precedent that'll turn you into just another socialist dictatorship, or let it happen, and set the precedent that'll result in every skilled person walking away.
>> An economic system based on cooperation and individual achievement rather than market competition. It seemed to have greater productivity and prosperity than the capitalism in the same regions for the time it was instated during the Spanish Civil War (at least before the time it was suppressed) .<<
That you've led with an excuse instead of a success speaks volumes. Venezuela seemed to be doing just fine, right up until it wasn't. The 20th century showed us many temporary successes that completely and utterly failed to withstand the test of time.
>>Those economic experiments that killed all those people were the fault of the Marxist-Leninism philosophy and Fascism, which both led to authoritarianism and the former did because of its faulty methodology. As long as an economic experiment stays careful of potential authoritarianism (which really shouldn't be hard to identify as a mechanism within the system) we should be fine. If it fails we could just intervene. We should be able to prevent as much death as possible that way.<<
And yet...
Anyway, again. You can have authoritarianism or you can give up socialism. The people who make an economy run will walk away from a situation where they can't personally profit. That's the reality. People are in it for themselves. You can deny that if you want, but all it means is you're working off faulty information, and after that... (At which point you've decided the people are the problem) you're on the road to being yet another Stalin. Or on the road to being murdered by yet another Stalin.
Interested in what kind of intervention you're thinking of here, BTW.
And there's so many millions of lives hanging on that 'should' - But after the 20th century, if you're not sure it's a failure of an ideology, what's a few more tens of millions?
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@DemonofElru666 >>Profit in that sense is not eliminated in socialism.
<<
I was saying the opposite. I was saying whatever system you had, profit was essential.
>>Which makes the issue devolve into imperialism in capitalism and previous economic systems. We can have economic and political systems without imperialism.
<<
Including Socialism. Remember when Hitler and Stalin split up Europe between them? Pepperidge Farm remembers. That's just one example. Given your reluctance to address it head on, it seems a safe bet you know there are many more.
>>If the people rule the government, it should have control over economic activity that could result in anti-social behavior against other nations, like imperialism. But the economy should largely be left alone by the government IMO, unless it's necessitated for there to be much control like in capitalism.
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If the govt leaves the internal economy alone, you're going to get Capitalism.
It's what people do when they can do their own things for themselves.
>>Why are you so sure about that? lol
<<
That the next hundred million deaths will be enough? Not really. Anyone who supports Socialism after the last century obviously doesn't give a shit about the masses of dead.
>>In collectivist anarchism, if I was an innovator I would be rewarded by the society according to the usefulness of the creation to the society. Then I would be able to set up a cooperative where I would able to derive even more value from my work. I could also, as a self employed person, just keep what I produce for myself as personal property and if I wanted to derive value from it, I could just trade it to the communal market.<<
And what happens when the next Bill Gates comes along, and wants to setup something far, far larger than himself?
Is he going to:
A. Do it there, where he'd be forced to split ownership of his company between himself and his employees?
B. Emigrate to a Capitalist country.
You're thinking very small scale.
>>A skilled person with a job gets paid more than an unskilled person that has the same job. Jobs that have more difficulty than another would have higher pay.
<<
Then wait until the envy (that this idea is based on) gets to the unskilled and they decide the skilled, wealthier people are conspiring against them.
>>There wouldn't be a single person that cannot keep what THEY ALONE produce.
<<
THEY ALONE sums it up. See my Bill Gates question. You'd be fine if all you needed was people doing little things. The big stuff, however... Good luck with that. The people capable of doing it would emigrate.
>>Production is often a social endeavor, and socialism is about distributing the fruits of social production equitably as well as having autonomy over what is produced, and the people in a society would agree to it because a lot more people are better off with that instead of having a society without that, in which people are subjugated to authoritarian institutions where capitalists/feudalists/etc. take the value of what another person produces for themselves. This can be said to be the raison d'etre of socialism's existence.
<<
Which is the reason the Iron Curtain was raised. Because the really good people. The people any economy desperately needs, will leave under those conditions. Unless their country is turned into a literal prison.
>>Didn't we already talk about this before? I believe I once said that the socialism in the anarchist regions of Spain were truly socialist in form, as in what was exactly as intended with it based on conception. All of the socialist experiments of the 20th century that ended up exactly as intended and envisioned by at least one of the theorists who created the ideology were destroyed by external forces, while all the other experiments that failed due to internal reasons weren't even the real thing. There's nothing that can be derived of the workability of the economic systems of socialism tested in the 20th century, because they were not even allowed to withstand the test of time. You can blame authoritarianism and capitalist imperialism for that. If Mutualism, Collectivist Anarchism, and Marxian Socialism/Communism had been allowed to stand by its own merits and failed, nobody would be a socialist anymore.<<
And that was where I pointed out all you've got is excuses.
What are the odds that the only 'workable' ones were all wiped out by external forces?
If Hitler was killed shortly before being rejected for art school, what place in history he'd had would have been far more positive as well. Could have been a great artist.
If you're not getting what I'm getting at: A success is anything that didn't have a chance to fail on its own. Those that did have a chance are invariable #notrealsocialism
If I had the same excuses to results ratio that Socialism does, I wouldn't be looked at for a minimum wage job.
>>There's little to no evidence to suggest that there would be authoritarianism in real socialism. Have you considered that you could be wrong about your assumptions? There's almost no incentive for someone to "not want to share" because such a person, who would typically be an innovator, would be paid more to compensate for their expertise.<<
Not as much as they could get in a Capitalist state, though. So how do you feel about turning a country into a prison?
>>Also, I think "the people who make the economy run" would like not having to risk as much value in their endeavors as they would under capitalism.<<
People who are good have confidence. Because they know they're good. Which enables them to be risk takers. Someone like that doesn't have the same aversion to risk as you apparently do.
I've had the same conversation with my wife. It took her years to understand that I don't view unemployment as an issue (I'm a contract worker) because I know I'm good enough to get another high paying job. It's why I won't touch a union. I don't want to be held back.
We're talking about people who are far, far better than I am.
>>Capitalistic activity doesn't really emerge naturally, it actually seems more of a cultural thing that will die out if a superior economic system is established.<<
you mean one that doesn't require an endless list of excuses, #notrealthateconomicsystem and lamentations of ones that died too young, which would, invariably, have gone well if they'd just had the chance?
>> If you forbid capitalism people that would want to engage in capitalistic activity would establish worker cooperatives instead. Like, why didn't a significant presence of capitalistic activity emerge in the Zapatistas communities after 24 years without it going full authoritarian? Why doesn't it spread in Rojava despite it being allowed?<<
Most likely, because the people who are inclined that way won't go near the place. People who can do this are generally wanted all over the world. (Currently on the second last interview for Hong Kong. I've also worked in the UK, two major cities in Australia, and am regularly contacted by American companies. WTF would I go to a place like a Zapatista community?)
A Better question is the reverse. There's absolutely nothing wrong with starting a cooperative in most Western countries. Why are they such a small part of the economy? Why did capitalism take over so rapidly in China, the moment the active suppression stopped?
>>The intervention I'm thinking I haven't really given that much thought, but it shouldn't have to be that complicated anyway. We could send aid to the people that aren't doing too well while economists analyze the problem with the system, then have the system changed if it can't be fixed. But I'm thinking these experiments should be done at a small scale first before being done on a bigger scale, so that it wouldn't be that hard in most cases to intervene in this way.
<<
You could take a look at the people and see what they have in common.
Like.... Not studying something useful. Blaming others for their failures. And yeah, a lot of people just aren't capable of being that useful.
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@DemonofElru666 Thankful I did this in Notepad.
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>>So what you actually mean is monetary profit? <<
Money is nothing more or less than a measure of productivity. I gave the definition earlier. Getting more out than you put in.
>>Gains and losses can be calculated under socialism too.<<
Is there some way I'm phrasing this that's confusing? I look at it, and it seems fairly simple, but what comes out of you in response is strange.
I never said it couldn't, BTW. What I said was it's essential under any system.
>>I've already given my reasons as to why those experiments weren't real socialism, and you'd have to be right about all socialisms in general for this to be true. So for now, we should just agree to disagree here.
<<
You forgot the hashtag. #notrealsocialism.
Which, again, is basically define as anything that lasted long enough to fail. The things that were cut short by something else appear to be #realsocialism.
>>No, capitalism is what you get when you have a mass of people that are dispossessed from the means to fund their own contribution to production,<<
Weird that Capitalist societies have a much, much higher standard of living than those that attempted to abandon it, then.
Also complete bollocks, especially in today's knowledge economy.
>>and a group of people that are able to take advantage of that by hiring them into servitude. <<
AKA: Giving people something of value in exchange for something of value under an agreement freely entered into.
>>It's just a thing that's much more likely to emerge in an economy based on competition.<<
You say competition like it's a bad thing.
What's wrong with it? If you're competing, you're trying to be better.
>>So because I have a different interpretation of the events than than your interpretation, I really couldn't give a shit about the people who died? Anyone who supports Socialism... anyone... doesn't give a shit about them? It's not that most of these people don't give a shit about them, it's that most of these people come to different conclusions about the events based on their own knowledge and observations about them, and still think socialism is tenable as long as it's done in a different way where it wouldn't kill so many people<<
Anyone who can ignore the 20th century fairly obviously doesn't.
Anyway: What's an acceptable number of the deaths for the next failure/attempt? Is 5 million a reasonable pricetag?
How many would it take to convince you that it's a bad idea if it fails again? 100 million obviously isn't enough, and you seem to think (like everyone else who tried) that you could do better.
>>Did you know that there are plenty of people that have invented things without much monetary incentive if at all? <<
I do.
Did you know that there are plenty of people who invent things and market them BECAUSE of a monetary incentive?
Your entire paragraph seems to suggest that as long as the number of people who have motivations that aren't monetary is greater than 0, it's not needed.
>>Even if innovators were purely motivated by monetary profit, they would share their innovation with the community, get their reward, and then move to the capitalist country where they can profit off their idea<<
You mean after they've just shared their idea with others, who can also take it?
Why do that when they can simply emigrate?
Any ideology that doesn't take human selfishness into account is doomed to fail. We're not descended from selfless people.
>>Eventually, people within the collectivist anarchist society that want to use the idea to benefit themselves and/or their communities will setup cooperatives where the innovation is used for production<<
How does that help the innovator?
That hurts the innovator.
>>Are you concerned about a person like Bill Gates not being able to steer the cooperative in the right direction? If so, that person could be granted power in the cooperative by being the lead resource manager or something. There's still a place for people that come up with the good ideas under workers self management, and they could be compensated more. But if your concerns are all about getting the most money out of everything, well... you should consider the above.<<
I'm concerned that a person like Bill Gates wouldn't have the incentive he'd be able to find in a Capitalist state in a cooperative, so he'd leave.
How much do you think a cooperative could afford to compensate bill gates? How does that compare with his earnings under Microsoft?
>>How envious does a person working for a capitalist enterprise get, when another employee doing the same job gets a raise and they don't?<<
That person can leave for another company that values him more in that case
I know. I've done it many times.
>> I find it hard to believe people would think others are conspiring against them. This just seems like the kind of thing that people would accept or get over, especially if they knew the reason others are getting paid more was because they were more skilled. <<
You have a very idealistic idea of human nature. That sort of rejection of reality isn't the sign of someone who could run a community. What's actually worse is that you've decided people are good, nice, reasonable, etc. So those who aren't are obviously aberrations. I realise you won't accept it, but when you've decided people are the problem, you get the mass deaths. Because you've got to get rid of the problem to make your dream work.
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>>Those aren't the same conditions<<
In your mind, which thinks people are good, pure, reasonable, etc (see the last paragraph) they're not. But that doesn't mean much.
>>And that COULD happen only if innovators were as motivated by maximum monetary profit as you assume,<<
Enough of the really big ones are.
It's why their ideas changed the world, instead of staying small.
>>if all innovators were the type to leave their friends and family behind for profit, and there was an out of control state (which there wouldn't be under collectivist anarchism). I strongly suggest you watch this video<<
I like how you say "all" there.
No, not all. But enough are. Particularly the big ones.
And that video is talking about normal people. The people you need are abnormal. The one in many millions.
It's like... Normal people don't emigrate. Which makes immigrants abnormal people. By definition.
However, thank you for pointing out that things like ego make a difference. There comes a point where money stops being valued for its own sake, but is valued as a way of keeping score. Or being the biggest and best. Same thing applies (I don't really care about money, although I don't have enough to stop working. I care about the score, though. That and working on something big) you don't have that in a commune. IT's just too small a pond.
Interesting that he mentioned Linux. I'm a Linux systems engineer. One of the problems you've had with Linux development (which does have a lot of money put into it) is that people only do the interesting stuff. Which is why we had Heartbleed and Shellshock. Bug fixing isn't interesting. Testing isn't interesting. Security checking isn't interesting. It's mainly new features that are. Which is why companies that profit from it have started putting serious money into incentivising people.
I put a lot of effort into my home network. I run services that are used by friends. But I very explicitly only work on the interesting/immediately annoying stuff. It's at work where I put the effort in to find every single thing that could go wrong and fix it. Because I need money to do uninteresting things. I will sit there for hours at work testing something against thousands of devices, because I need to find every edge case. But that's not shit I'll do for free. Sod that. It's boring.
It's not just the innovators, but things that make things what I like to call tidy. Things that can be relied upon. The people who can take something from being a great idea to a great, finely tuned, properly finished product.
Use Linux, then use Windows, and tell me the difference. I use Ubuntu at home, BTW (developed by a company that very definitely pays its staff)
>>Economies are pretty complex and one slight variation to them might result in something very different. That's why it's important to note what was originally intended with a theoretical economy, and if a number of them emerge that are exactly or almost exactly as intended with them but were destroyed by external forces, I personally think they deserve to have another chance. The kibbutz system, in which ALL types of property were shared (and should have become worse than many countries in the eastern bloc by your assumptions), had a chance to stand by its own merits and even though it failed, nobody really died because of that experiment. So the same could happen in another socialist experiment like collectivist anarchism, except this time it might actually succeed.<<
Really, it says that there's two outcomes:
1. Everyone walks away.
2. People start to get murdered.
Either way is failure, but congratulations on having a failure that didn't lead to mass murder... Your standards are a bit low.
And the Kibbutzi are still part of "nothing to show for it"
>>If it fails the experiment would just dissolve, not turn into another soviet union.<<
There's more costs to a failed experiment than just the body count. There's also the economic damage that causes genuine problems. Lost opportunity. Lower standard of living. Worse healthcare, sanitation, etc.
The Kibbutzi were fortunate they had the Capitalist Israeli economy to fail into. Without that... Completely relying on themselves... How do you think it would have gone?
My prediction is that if the experiment failed, you'd have a failed state, with all the evils that contains. Including (especially) bad people taking advantage of the chaos.
>>But what about the people within those societies? Literally none of them would have inclinations for entrepreneurship or capitalistic activity and could leave if they wanted to?<<
The question for a lot is do they have the education they need to be useful elsewhere? If they don't, they're trapped.
>>These are places with economies that still have economic development with populations that are growing, so there seems to be plenty of entrepreneurs that don't leave those places for some reason.<<
What I'm seeing is a largely agrarian society that would be considered beyond abject poverty in any Western state.
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/01/are-mexico-zapatista-rebels-still-relevant-20141183731812643.html
Not really the most inspiring example.
It does seem to be better than one of the most impoverished parts of Mexico, though, so.... Congrats? It's pretty easy to improve on nothing.
>>Because most people don't even know what socialism or cooperatives even are, thanks to our shitty education systems<<
We've got this thing called the Internet. We've also got living examples. Just... They tend to be quite small. The potential doesn't seem to be there.
I used to shop at cooperatives on my way to work. They're definitely known about.
However, I'll agree. Most people don't know what Socialism is. They think it's Social Democracy, and therefore think it's nice.
However, start teaching the truth about Socialism in the 20th century and watch the shit hit the fan.
>>things like the red scare, the events of the 20th century, and the mainstream news, all of which contributed to the muddling (either intentionally or unintentionally) of the actual meaning of socialism.<<
And apologists for it. People who try to misrepresent what it actually is.
>>Even if someone knows what cooperatives are, they typically would think that it's not very viable despite the fact that they very much are.<<
Not if you want real rewards, though.
Notice how few major companies are moving towards that?
Your criteria for "good" really does seem to be "not a guaranteed failure"
The people you need aim higher.
>>Probably... but you really should consider the fact that not everyone invents things for the money though. There have been plenty of people that have invented things simply because they want to use it for themselves and wanted the world to use it as well.<<
Nope. But most do want rewards.
Not everyone, but quite easily enough to make a massive, massive difference.
It takes more than one altruist to make a socialist economy work.
It also takes more than "Might not fail with mass murder, maybe, as long as there's a Capitalist safety net" to make an ideology worthwhile.
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@DemonofElru666 >>Well, that was a brainfart on my part. <<
Well that's fair enough, and it happens.
That being said, there was a reason I said it in the first place, going back several posts to when you said "No, and the reason for why they behaved the same way was because those states had to do exactly as private capitalist institutions do, which is exchanging products and services for profit. So those that controlled the state responded to the same incentives that capitalists would. "
Which is unaddressed except in a few other brainfarts.
>>There was some pretty strict criteria on what defines a socialist society that was laid out in the 19th century, with the main one basically being worker ownership and control of the means of production. Have you considered looking up what was debated in the International Workingmen's Association (or what was called the First International)? <<
I'd assume many things were debated.
But that doesn't make them socialism.
And the government is there as the representative of all workers.
>>People generally prefer to work for themselves, and not for others. If they have to work with others, they would generally want an equitable share of the profits and as much autonomy as possible. Capitalism denies these basic things to a large majority of the populace. <<
I have no idea what that has to do with what I said.
>> "freely entered into"? It's all about leverage, and capitalists have far more leverage than the working class in the agreement. It's pretty fucked up that people are forced to live under a system that perpetuates huge imbalances of power between those that engage in transactions for their own means of living. It's why people like Karl Marx described Capitalism as a "Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie".<<
Both sides benefit from it. Both sides choose it as the best alternative available. Neither side thinks it's perfect.
So, yeah, freely entered into. That the alternative is worse doesn't change this. One choice being better/worse than the other is generally the basis for pretty much all choices beyond what's effectively a coin toss.
>>If society can engage in cooperation as the basis for an economy, rather than competition as the basis, then the latter is clearly barbaric and should have been abolished a long time ago. <<
That's a pretty big "if"
>>Except most of these people aren't ignoring it, they are just coming with different conclusions. At least, that's what I have done. <<
Conclusions that do a pretty good job of finding excuses for the masses of dead.
But I'm sure when it's done your way, it'll be different.
Just like everyone else who's tried (and piled up the bodies)
>>No, what I'm suggesting is that as long as people aren't being paid peanuts for their innovations, which is what a collectivist anarchist society shouldn't do, there would be plenty of innovators that would stay if there's so many people that don't have that much of a monetary incentive, at least enough to have the economy functioning well. <<
Taking Bill Gates as the ultimate example, there's nothing that the collectivist society could offer that isn't peanuts compared with what he could get elsewhere.
And there would be some, but as a percentage? Pretty small.
>>They can't patent in a collectivist anarchist society, but they could in whatever capitalist country they move to. <<
Which kind of helps my point.
Obviously, the collectivist anarchist society will steal their ideas, but that still doesn't give the people like this reason to stay.
>>Nobody in the collectivist anarchist society can use the innovation in whatever capitalist country the innovator patents it at, so the other people can only use it within collectivist anarchist society. <<
More reason to leave. If your idea is going to be stolen, it's better to take it to where you can at least oversee it and make money from it.
For the rest, the collectivist society will get what it can reverse engineer (those capable of doing that will probably leave, BTW. Because money) or what it can get a small number of ideaologues to steal from the company that empoyees them.
>>Most of their earnings would come from the society actually, and if their really that useful to the cooperative they would typically be paid significantly more than the lowest paid member of the cooperative. <<
You don't seem to understand that we're talking about absolute terms of reward. What the cooperative could afford to pay them would still be peanuts compared with what they could get elsewhere.
>>Except I'm not "rejecting reality", I'm trying to see how something like that would happen. I don't have an "idealistic idea of human nature"... there's not a single damn scientific consensus on what human nature is.<<
As a whole? No. But we know that there are lots of bad elements in any society. Bad elements that are perfectly capable of wreaking havoc.
Ultimately, there's no difference between us and the Germans. When push comes to shove, we're all capable of doing what they did
>> you've got here is just a claim that you need to back up with evidence. People are already well aware that the more skill you have with a job, the higher you get paid in a capitalist society. Why would it be any different in a socialist society?<<
The amount of zeroes is a big thing.
How much do you think a Collectivist society could afford to pay 1985 Bill Gates for Windows?
Or 1994 Bezos for Amazon?
edit: When I think about what you say, you seem to have problems differentiating between "some reward" and "massive reward"
Many of your arguments on reward rely on them being the same "Oh, they're still paid more than the less skilled people, so that's the same" Ignoring the difference between "being paid more than your neighbour" and "owning a fleet of private jets"
$10 is a reward.
$10 million is a bigger reward.
I'd probably fellate someone for 10 million (I'm straight, but 10 million is a shitload of cash). I wouldn't consider it for 10.
The logic you've given says I should do it for $10 because it's still a reward.
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